


Tangle of Blue

by womanwolfwitch



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Croatoan/Endverse, M/M, My First Fanfic, Not Beta Read, Season/Series 04, Season/Series 06
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-20
Updated: 2014-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-09 16:03:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,355
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1989129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/womanwolfwitch/pseuds/womanwolfwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The caress when it comes is unexpected and unwelcome, but there's the strength of eons in Lucifer's fingers as he tilts Castiel's face up to his and Castiel is only mortal and breakable and so he stays still as Lucifer's fingers traces the planes of his face until he's satisfied. "I'm going to give you a gift, Castiel." </p><p>Lucifer's eyes are soft, his voice gentle and almost tender as he cups the curve of Castiel's jaw, "Let me show you, little brother, what happens now." </p><p>There is a flash of light and then, blessedly, nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was my love that did us both to death. — Sylvia Plath, “Electra on Azalea Path”

 

Well, I’m not a slave to a god that doesn’t exist. Well, I’m not a slave to a world that doesn’t give a shit. - Marilyn Manson, The Fight Song

 

***

 

Castiel hadn't expected to ever open his eyes again.

 

But there's weak sunlight shining down on him through a broken window and a copper taste in the back of his throat and he recognizes the pattern of bullet holes in the wall across from him and he knows exactly where he is even if he doesn't understand exactly how he still is at all. He shouldn't be. He doesn't want to be. What he wants though has never had any influence on his existence and he supposes it's a kind of hubris to think he be granted the gift of wish-fulfilment now.

 

He should feel lucky, but he just feels hollow and sticky and aware of a catalog of aches and pains that he's going to have to deal with eventually. But for the moment he just wants to lie there on the concrete and pretend that none of the last several years ever happened. It lasts about as long as it takes him to take a deep breath which sends him gagging and rolling over as his stomach clenches in protest. He shuts his eyes but the smell remains, sweet and sour and metallic as he struggles to breathe.

 

It hurts to stand, ribs burning and stomach roiling against the unwelcome movement, but he manages to put one foot in front of the other as he makes it down the dark and narrow hallway to the factory's main floor. The smell is stronger here and it only takes a moment for him spot the reason, though it feels as if it takes another few minutes for his brain to process exactly what it is he's seeing. Once he finally understands, he really does want to retch or maybe run but all he can do is stand numbly at the rictus that was once Risa's face. It's the only part of her still recognizable. They left her lying on her stomach, arms spread wide, and the fall of her hair across her neck matted and tangled red and white and yellow. Small curling strips lay in a semi-circle of rays around the upper half of her body and it takes him a moment to realize what he's looking at is her skin.

 

He gags, stumbling backwards and almost tripping over the body of one of the men that had gone in with them but his face is gone and all Castiel can see are the cracked ribs spreading open from his back like wings. His spinal column hangs exposed in the air below his waist and his legs are nowhere in sight.

 

Everything after that is a blur of red and white. He gags, tastes stomach acid in his mouth as he struggles to find a way out of this building. He wants a drink, a pill, a snort, a smoke but he hadn't planned on surviving so for once he wasn't carrying. He's seen worse, he knows, in the bowels of Hell itself for forty long years while he searched and fought and then found the Righteous Man. But that had been different, surreal, like moving through the frames of a horror film. His Grace had been a buffer, a shield, and he hadn't understood then what suffering meant. He hadn't understood anything.

 

He understands now.

 

His hands shake with guilt, with anger, with desperation because in all this carnage he has yet to come upon Dean and he doesn't know whether that fact relieves or terrifies him. He does know though that the world still feels sick and dying and Lucifer's presence continues to hum at the back of his mind like a light bulb. Whatever happened, it wasn't in their favor. Whatever happens he needs to be with Dean.

 

He doesn't see the demon until he's already been stabbed and there's a long moment when his world narrows down to the burn of pain in his abdomen and the black eyes smirking in front of him. The Angel blade in hand burns cold and hot and surprises the demon just as he had surprised Castiel earlier. There's a moment of blinding lights before the shell before him drops to the ground and Castiel stumbles backward, dropping the blade with a hiss of pain as the skin on his hand burns and blisters. He remembers numbly that this is why although he carries the blade he rarely uses it anymore.

 

His other hand is pressed to the gash in his side and when it comes away it's red with his blood. His knees want to buckle and he thinks for a moment that he could just lie there and bleed out and not have to deal with this shut anymore. But Dean is out there and the moment passes and Castiel forces himself to keep moving towards the area in the back which looks like some overgrown gravel and mud garden. The scent of roses hangs sweet in the hot air.

 

Beneath his fingers his wound is weeping and he can feel the jagged edges of torn skin and muscle sliding against his fingers. Castiel thinks he's had worse. He thinks that even if that's untrue adrenaline will keep him upright and moving a little longer; long enough to find Dean.

 

By the time Castiel reaches the makeshift garden his vision is blurring gray and white at the edges and he has to take a moment to lean against the chain fence while he gasps desperately for air and balance and waits for his vision to clear. The city is a dirt brown smudge in the background, quiet and ruined and somewhere beyond that Camp Chitaqua nestles safely, protected by wards and blood and guns and the lives of those who live there now and lived there before. Castiel wonders how much longer that will be true.

 

Castiel spares a thought for Chuck, Former Prophet of the Lord, and the one person Castiel knows will keep looking for their return long after the others have given up. He might even miss them. But Castiel knew this was a suicide mission from the first, knows that he won't be coming back and the Dean never wanted to either and that was enough for Castiel.

 

The sense of foreboding hangs thick in the air and he tastes something like death on his tongue reminding him that it's not over yet so he pushes his feet forward even as his thoughts slide back to Dean. He's almost certain now of what he'll find but there's a gap between certainty and knowing and he has to see this through. Castiel chose this path of his own free will after all and even if he hadn't known the particulars a large part of him had expected that it would turn out like this.

 

Castiel remembers the rumble of Raphael's true voice the last time they talked, "Happy endings are for fairy tales and fools, Castiel." But Castiel hadn't acknowledged him, choosing instead to use what waning grace he had left to heal Dean's body and soothe Dean's mind as he slept. Raphael had watched for a while, pity and disgust curling his lips and hardening his hands but he left without another word. Not long after that Heaven closed up shop and Castiel fell.

 

There had been no going back then and Castiel was left only with this slow painful shuffle along the mortal coil. And while he had found love, it was sorrow and loneliness that he knew best. It was looking more and more likely that there wouldn't be another chance to put things right.

 

At first, the garden looks empty. It's quiet and peaceful and for a moment all Castiel sees are the erratic tufts of green grass and the lone sweet-smelling rose bush and he thinks, "This is nice." Right before his gaze settles on the human shaped lump lying still and silent on the ground and everything stops. Only it doesn't, of course, the sun is still shining and the grass still growing and Castiel somehow moving to the body and cradling it in his arms as his voice forms the sounds of "Dean, Dean, Dean" but there's no one left to answer.

 

Castiel doesn't stop, even though he's almost as old as creation and has known Death far longer than any mortal. He clings to a kind of selfish hope that just this once God will hear him and remember that He's supposed to be merciful and loving and give Dean back to Castiel. But Castiel knows God and so knows that He is none of those things; He's only silent and absent and apathetic and cold and dead. And now Dean is all of these things too.

 

He stops saying Dean's name but he can't stop the tears.

 

Dean's skin is cold against his fingertips as Castiel gently closes one eye and then another. He can see how the angle of the neck is all wrong, squashed and tilted to one side and it makes him shudder with revulsion. But still he can't let go. Dean is too cold and there's dirt ground into the side of his face and hair where he'd fallen, the skin turning pale and purple and dead. And even though Castiel knows he has to let go, has to leave, he continues to kneel and cry and assert, "This can't be real."

 

"Well isn't this pathetic." Lucifer appears without warning, white suit gleaming in the muggy sunshine as he ardently fondled a rose before dropping carelessly onto the body. "Really, even for you this is just sad, Heathcliff."

 

"Lucifer," Castiel's angel blade flared hotly in its sheath; Dean stayed cold beneath his hands; and Castiel raised his eyes to Sam, "It's been too long."

 

Lucifer just smirks and seeing his brother look at him through Sam's face like that twists something inside him that hurts. Castiel hadn't known the younger Winchester brother very well, hadn't really wanted to since during good part of their acquaintance all he had seen when looking at the bought was an abomination, Lucifer's vessel. But Dean had known Sam and Dean had loved him and eventually Castiel had gotten to know him too through the constant stream of stories Dean had doled in whispers when it had just been the two of them in the dark.

 

If an apocalypse can be said to have good days it would have been then. But eventually news about Sam had reached Dean and the stories had dried up and there had been no more talking between them. And so it hurt to look at Sam but Castiel knew it must have hurt Dean worse; it must have been unbearable to look up into a face you had loved and watch it sneer as it snuffed you out as carelessly as if you were an ant.

 

"What did you do?" Lucifer isn't expecting that question and for a moment he's unguarded and Castiel can see the surprise flicker across Sam's face and beneath that something else, something Castiel might almost call fear if it wasn't chased so closely by anger.

 

The moment passes and the face looking back at Castiel is once again all placid boyish charm and concern. But there's tenseness to his voice when he says, "I could ask you the same question."

 

"What?" The word slips out before Castiel can stop himself so instead he ends up unsure; blinking up at Lucifer like the confused half-baked stoner he's spent the last few years making himself into. And then he remembers 2009 Dean and has to stop himself from looking around frantically to see if there's a twin body of the he's holding lying around someplace, just waiting for Castiel to stumble across it and fall apart. But he's only human now, not and angel and even if he still was the chance that he'd ever be able to fool Lucifer, one of the oldest and most powerful archangel - beloved and reviled and missed by God - is laughable at best.

 

Somehow Lucifer already knows and all Castiel can do is watch as he snickers. "The look on your face," Lucifer's laughing through his words even as he kneels in the dirt beside Castiel, clapping one hand on the man's shoulder as if they were friends, "Castiel, Castiel, Castiel... never play poker. Of course I know about the other Dean. I've known since he arrived trailing the scent of Zachariah's handiwork behind him like toilet paper." Lucifer smiled again, intimate and confiding, "Now there's an angel I wish I could've gotten my hands on."

 

And then the devil winked at him.

 

"Oh, get that look of your face, I let him go. A choice I'm beginning to regret right about now but timelines," Lucifer shrugged elegantly, "What are you gonna do?" Castiel just keeps staring at him blankly, dumbly; torn somewhere between fear and relief and sorrow and hate. He knows Lucifer wants an answer from him, but all he can do is shrug back and wait. Lucifer's eyes narrow, "Come now, little brother, surely there's still enough angel in you to sense what's happening? Focus or I'll chop your distraction into a million tiny pieces and then eat it."

 

Castiel's hands tightened instinctively around the body. Dean might be dead, but Castiel has some idea of how the remains should be treated. They should be shown respect and love and receive the kind of traditional salt and burn the Hunter would have wanted and not be made into sushi for the devil. Lucifer gaze on him is expectant and impatient and even though Castiel doesn't expect anything to happen he closes his eyes and tries to let himself feel the world around him like he used too.

 

Nothing happens and for a while the only thing Castiel feels is dumb while Lucifer's disappointment rolls off him in waves. He's about to admit defeat when he feels the smallest tug and without any thought his consciousness is chasing it, wondering at it, poking at it - Castiel's eyes opened as his body vibrated with pain.

 

"So, I was right." Lucifer doesn't sound pleased at having discovered whatever it is that's turning the world sour and painful. He just sounds sad and tired and annoyed but Castiel can't bring him to care because now that he's aware of the problem he can feel it tearing him apart at the molecular level and fuck if that doesn't hurt. Lucifer's hand tightened around the curve of his shoulder and Castiel can feel the burn of healing bringing the pain down to a more tolerable level. But there's no stopping this, it's too far gone and too far out of their hands and even if a solution presented itself Castiel is certain he wouldn't take it. He really doesn't want to live in a world where Dean is dead.

 

"Something changed, something big enough to undo prophecy, to tamper with fate. This reality is fading from the plane of existence. Somehow your pathetic Dean managed to change things enough in the past that this reality will never come to pass."

 

"Then we've won." It hurts to speak but if pain is the cost of getting the chance to rub it in Lucifer's face then Castiel will gladly pay the price. Victory was theirs and if it leaves him feeling a little too empty and a little too cold Castiel refuses to acknowledge it. After all in a few minutes none of this would matter, none of it would ever be and somewhere out there Dean will still be alive. It's enough to make him smile.

 

Castiel spares a glance for Lucifer but instead of the anger or defeat he might expect he's met with pity and the look of long suffering tolerance one would show a very slow, very stupid child. "Have you? At what cost?"

 

Castiel has no answer to that. All he knows is that he would pay anything, give anything for it to not be Dean's flesh cooling and pale beneath his fingers. That it would be worth it to see Dean smile again at Sam and call him brother. That there was much he would sacrifice to keep Lucifer in the pit. He doesn't need to say anything because Lucifer already knows.

 

The caress when it comes is unexpected and unwelcome, but there's the strength of eons in Lucifer's fingers as he tilts Castiel's face up to his and Castiel is only mortal and breakable and so he stays still as Lucifer's fingers traces the planes of his face until he's satisfied. "I'm going to give you a gift, Castiel."

 

Lucifer's eyes are soft, his voice gentle and almost tender as he cups the curve of Castiel's jaw, "Let me show you, little brother, what happens now."

 

There is a flash of light and then, blessedly, nothing.

 

 


	2. Interlude One: Dean In Three Parts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The world only feels empty, but it's not. It's full of monsters.

Love isn’t soft, like those poets say. Love has teeth which bite and the wounds never close. - Stephen King, The Body

 

“I survived, but it's not a happy ending.” ― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

 

 

* * *

 

 

I.

 

It's quiet at the end of the world. Sometimes Dean thinks everything is gone but him and that he'll be stuck wandering forever in this endless wasteland, purgatory, labyrinth, forest that he'll never find his way out of; always searching for something lost, something just outside his reach. But there's always something to pull him back: the heavy yoke of responsibility, the undeserved warmth  of Cas's hand in his, Sam out there somewhere busy destroying the world. He puts one foot in front of the other and holds tightly onto Cas.

 

The world only feels empty, but it's not. It's full of monsters.

 

They find an abandoned manufacturing plant in the middle of nowhere and decide to make camp there. It's more space than they need for the six of them but Dean likes the idea of a little privacy and works out a patrol roster that should keep them covered. Teams of two, like always; he pairs himself with Cas.

 

By the time Dean's done with that Chuck is standing nervously in front of him with a tin can, a fork and a list of supplies they need and an estimate on how long what they've got left will last. Dean just nods, manages some response he hopes is heart warming, and goes about opening his dinner. Beans, again.

 

Dean's eating methodically, zoned out and half-asleep on his feet when Cas settles next to him so that the lines of their bodies touch. It's like an electric jolt and Dean can't help pressing back against him so that their knees and elbows knock together as they eat. It's uncomfortable and ungainly and the only thing left in his life that Dean could describe as good so he doesn't complain when he gets Cas's pointy elbow in his ribs or almost spills what's left of his dinner on the floor. He just huffs and curves his arm around Cas's back, fingers hooked into the loops of his jeans before tilting the can back and swallowing the last of the beans.

 

From the corner of his eye he can see Cas smile, a slow private curving of the lips that lights his eyes up like a bulb. They're like navy or denim or the color of the sky after the break of dawn in autumn and Dean can't help but feel more than a little self-conscious that Armageddon has turned him into a sap. But he's pretty sure he didn't wax lyrical about the color of Cas's eyes out loud so he figures no harm, no foul.

 

Cas is still staring at him though, still smiling when he unexpectedly presses his spoon against Dean's mouth and says, "Here."

 

Peaches, Dean thinks stupidly and he has to close his eyes against the unexpected sweetness. He can't remember the last time he had fruit and the lingering taste of syrup and sugar and cinnamon is almost enough to make him moan. When Dean opens his eyes Cas is still staring at him, eyes gone dark and knowing as he brushes his fingers along the seam of Dean's lips. The touch lingers, like the taste of the peaches, as they stumble to their feet in search of an empty office or corner to make their own. They have a few hours before Dean has scheduled their watch.

 

II.

 

"I'm sorry."

 

His voice is hollow, tired and stretched thin but it doesn't matter because there's no one around to hear it. There's blood on his hand and an ugly gash running perpendicular to his ribs where Paul managed to slide his machete through the thin cotton of Dean's shirt. Still, Dean is the one left standing, still breathing while Paul's brains and most of his skull are splattered across the wall in front of him.

 

"Fuck."

 

It wasn't supposed to go like this. They'd spent all night scoping out the small town, putting together a plan for a desperately needed supply run. The place had been empty, quiet with no sign of Croats or demons anywhere. So they'd gone in, just the four of them, a routine mission that had gone FUBAR almost immediately. And now Paul was dead and Sally too and Cas was missing and all Dean could do was stand staring at bits of gore.

 

He turns and behind him on the floor is what's left of Sally. It's his handiwork too and his fists clench as he fights back the urge to vomit, tries to get a hold on his guilt. She was just a kid and he had promised to keep her safe. Instead he ended up putting a bullet in her because he hadn't been able to keep her away from the Croats.

 

He remembered the way she turned to him, green eyes wide and hands shaking but her voice had been steady, "Do it. Now. Don't let me become like them."

 

He'd raised the gun without hesitation, eyes on hers when he pulled the trigger. She'd barely fallen when Paul realized what had happened and turned on Dean. Paul had been 22, an art student before everything went to hell. Gentle with the wounded in a way that even Cas wasn't. Everyone he loved was dead and now he was too.

 

Sally was only 18 and she'd never been in love. Something she'd confided in Dean by the campfire after telling him how lucky he was that he had Cas, how she'd always hoped to find something like that herself. Her eyes had drifted to Paul in the fire light, her features soft.

 

His face was wet and Dean scrubbed at it. Cas was still out there somewhere and Dean had to find him. I'm coming for you, Cas. Please. Please be alive. Please.

 

III.

 

It's Castiel who kisses him beneath a clear blue summer sky, four weeks before they leave Sioux Falls. It's a surprise and it's not and even though there's a part of Dean that's having a mini-gay panic meltdown, there's a much larger part of him that cups Cas's face and kisses him back.

 

In the end that part wins.

 

The next two weeks are like a dream. Yeah, it's the apocalypse and they've somehow adopted one alcoholic prophet and they're all shacked up at Bobby's so privacy is at a minimum but there's also knowing the taste of Cas's mouth and the heat of his skin and the spot at the base of his spine that makes him melt like butter and let out the kind of dirty moan that gets Dean hard in .03 seconds flat. The good stuff, Dean thinks to himself when they're alone and wrung out and pressed together in the backseat of the Impala, or anywhere else horizontal with even a modicum of privacy. It's like Dean's a teenager again, at the mercy of his hormones, unable to keep his hands off of Cas for any significant length of time. It would would embarrassing except for the fact that Cas seems to have a similar problem.

 

Even now, spent and sated and entwined it still doesn't feel like enough, like this could ever be enough. It's the kind of feeling that Dean always ran from and feared and secretly coveted before and now that he has it he's terrified of what will happen when he doesn't anymore. It mixes with his happiness, turning him gentle and possessive and protective and irrational in a hundred other ways he doesn't want to think about. Anyone else he would've driven crazy by now, but Cas just stares at him with eyes too blue and knowing and even though he never says a word Dean knows that Cas gets it.

 

Dean suspects that Cas isn't quite immune to the feeling either. He takes to wearing Dean's clothes and has given up any pretense of personal space whatsoever so that they live almost entirely in one another's bubbles, a gangly eight limbed monster that can't keep its hands off itself. But it's the end of the world so they don't talk about it, don't question it, just cling to each other and the little pocket of happiness they managed to create for as long as fate will let them.

 

Instead they spend what from time they have memorizing the length and breadth of their bodies, learning how they fit together, how they move, and sound and taste. It's the only thing they don't flinch from, the one thing they face head on; desperate and reckless and devouring. And even though they don't say it, it becomes obvious in the too reverent glide of fingertips on flesh, the way they can't turn away from each other, the heat of their kiss. And so Dean knows, even though neither one of them will ever say it. He knows, and Cas does too.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to the people that read and left kudos or comments.


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